Hand held computing devices are used for a wide variety of applications ranging from smart cellular phones to complicated remote control devices. While processing power, memory, and other features of such devices are being improved with developing technologies, the challenges of small size display and input mechanism are more difficult to overcome.
Hand held computing devices may include a hard keyboard (actual keys) or a soft keyboard (a keyboard application on a touch-sensitive display) for user input. Due to size constraints such keyboards are likely to be a reduced keyboard, where multiple functionalities are assigned to individual buttons (keys). These devices typically include an Application Program Interface (API) or a separate application mapping the physical or virtual keys to characters or commands.
Increasingly, however, hand held devices are being equipped with the capability of operating with multiple keyboards. For example, a smart cellular phone/personal digital assistant (PDA) device may include a reduced or custom hard keyboard, a soft keyboard, a virtual phone pad, and even a connection capability to a standard full size keyboard. While the selection of keyboards may make it easier for the user to use a preferred keyboard type, different mappings between keyboards may make avoiding ambiguity in interpreting keyboard inputs problematic.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.